SNOWPIERCER - Tuesday 12th August 2014

'SNOWPIERCER' has had a limited release in Australia, and hit those limited screens a few weeks ago now, and it wasn't until last night that I ventured out to the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace to see this unique near-future Sci-Fi offering from South Korean Director Bong Joon-ho in his English language feature debut. With an all star cast that takes in the likes of Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer, and Ed Harris, and a solid story line based on the French graphic novel, 'Le Tansperceneige' this film should be gaining much more publicity and much more screen time than it has been. All that said, I would recommend this film to you for the spectacle that has been created for around US$40M, the strong cast and the compelling story line - catch it before it disappears from the big screen, and you wish later that you had, because you won't be disappointed!

The film opens up in 2014 when global warming is having disastrous and irreversible effects on our fragile planet. Some 70+ nations around the world have united and agreed to release an experimental gas into the earth's atmosphere that will cool the planet, and restore our climatic conditions to some level of pre-global warming normalcy. All the world's best scientific brains have collaborated and agreed that this will work.

Well, guess what? It doesn't, and the effect is the dire opposite of what was intended, and the world freezes over killing almost all human, plant and animal life and burying just about everything under a thick blanket of snow and ice. The effects of this when we see this on screen are quite stunning and very different to many of the other global climatic apocalypse films we have seen in the past.

Fast-track to 17 years later and it is 2031, and we are abroad a train - a long train, a very long train, in fact a very very long train - 'The Snowpiercer'. This train houses what remains of human society - the good, the bad and the ugly almost, and within the train their is a unfair and unjust class system of the haves and the have nots! At the rear of the train are society's dead-beats, the poor, the disadvantaged, the criminals who have lived in near squalor for the past 17 years surviving on gelatinous protein bars that they are fed daily. Some were born on the train and know no different, and amongst the adults and the aged who knew life before the big freeze there are young children running around accepting of their environment because it is their world. In this rear section is Curtis Everett (Chris Evans) who was 17 when he boarded the train, and is now 34 - he is looking to rebel against the authority on the train and lead an uprising to the front of the train where he needs to seize control from Wilford (Ed Harris) the creator of the train and the keeper of the 'sacred eternal engine' which powers the train by perpetual motion. We don't see Wilford until the final act and throughout he is referred to in almost a God like manner - the saviour of humanity, the one who must be obeyed, but it is he who is responsible for the 'oder of things' on the train, for maintaining the human and ecological 'balance', and for the class system that has evolved out of necessity.

In Curtis' band of revolutionaries is Edgar (Jamie Bell), Gilliam (John Hurt) minus an arm and a leg, Tanya (Octavia Spencer), Namgoong Minsoo (Song Kang-ho) and Yona (Ko Ah-sung) amongst others who spearhead the revolt. To do so they must progress through the train overcoming armed guards aplenty and those intent in thwarting the revolution as they have done with others in the past. Each train carriage is heavily fortified with solid electric doors (referred to as 'gates'), but as they progress they pass through the prison facility, then the water treatment plant, the kitchen that makes the gelatinous protein bars, onto a garden where fruit and vegetables are cultivated, into a walk through aquarium tunnel, through a classroom and onto bars, restaurants, clubs, plunge pools and saunas, living quarters and each time the opulence, the richness, and the extravagance notches up a level until the engine is reached at the front.

Along the way they encounter Minister Mason (an almost unrecognisable and brilliant turn by Tilda Swinton) who is responsible for dispensing justice as she sees fit, and unleashing everything in her power to undo the revolutionaries and prevent them from progressing. Swinton hams it up gloriously with a thick Yorkshire accent, protruding false teeth and thick rimmed glasses that make her a cross between a young Margaret Thatcher and a crazed school Headmistress who rules over her pupils with a rod of iron, a cane of steel, and a gaze that will freeze your very soul!

As the revolt progresses up the train we learn more of the central characters and what they have experienced, we see more of the train and we discover more about Wilford and his train that has traversed the globe on a single 480,000kms railway line for the past 17 years non-stop, taking a whole year exactly to circumnavigate once. We learn of deception and double-cross, and we learn where loyalties lie before the almost inevitable ending, and eventual hope and redemption.

This is an audacious science fiction apocalypse action film that is different, unique and well realised on the big screen. It is a pity it has not had a wider release, and for this reason you should search it out and see it on the big screen before it disappears to DVD and Bluray.

-Steve, at Odeon Online.